


Wirt Alone

by xathira



Series: Prince of the Unknown [3]
Category: Over the Garden Wall (Cartoon & Comics)
Genre: Angst, Beast Wirt, Fear, No comfort here folks, Other, Transformation, he has to suffer before he becomes a prince, needs to really earn that crown
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-16
Updated: 2019-10-16
Packaged: 2020-12-20 16:35:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,721
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21059771
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xathira/pseuds/xathira
Summary: He is starving.  He is scared.  He is desperate.His antlers are growing in.





	1. 🙞Lost🙜

After he snips off her wings and frees her from her feathers, Wirt waits for Beatrice. 

He sits with his arms hugging his knees, mooning after her like a puppy pining for its master. It had been so abrupt—bluebird one moment, girl the next—that he still feels dazed. Once Wirt loses side of those ginger curls, he curses himself for not asking to follow her. Maybe her family would have welcomed him again like they’d welcomed him in the hollow tree; he was lost like Beatrice had been, after all. But when the sun sets… and stars twinkle between the branches… and Wirt has not moved from his spot, brightening the woods with his own forlorn lanterns-for-eyes… Beatrice does not come back for him. 

A hard lump fists itself in the space between his collar bones. He swallows against the pressure. Panicking, ready to vomit. Wirt hadn’t _really_ wanted to be alone—not for good—and the woods seem to bottom out from under him in the instant he realizes that Beatrice has left him and he has no one and Greg is gone and he’ll never know if Greg made it home and _he’s_ never going home and _the Unknown is all he’ll ever have, he cannot escape,_ he’s trapped in this hell with no way out—

He lurches to his feet and stumbles like a newborn fawn, joints aching from how long he spent curled in his bramble nest. Wirt can’t inhale deeply enough. He’s trying to suck in all the air in this whole world and it still isn’t enough to keep his head from spinning. 

Brittle branches rustle around him. Whispering. He leans against the pallid trunk of a tree and senses the sycamore’s heart reaching up, reacting to his distress. Echoing it. Amplifying it. The Unknown bends toward him—reflects his terror like a mirror—and swallows Wirt like a grave.

He disappears into the bark, leaves, roots, rot. He drowns in the glistening snow and falls endlessly through the midnight sky. He is everywhere—_everything._ His awareness is torn through each tree, snared in the roots buried deep underground. He has no heart or soul so the forest floods him and shreds out of his fragile skin, overwhelming him, and the boy’s screams shake every shadow in limbo. 

Wirt is lost like this for _days._

The horror of losing his body—the atrocious openness of his mind, peeled bare for the Unknown—is unending agony. _I don’t want to see it. It’s too much. Too much._ Pieces of thought ripped from him and flung to every corner of this reality, leaving Wirt frantically snatching at thin air. Wirt feels wildlife cower from him, deer and squirrels and birds and reptiles shivering against that unseen force of naked fear. Their dread becomes _his_ dread, _his_ dread becomes a foreboding storm holding the Unknown hostage, and all the citizens of this bizarre place will murmur for years about _those frightful nights the woods were weeping._ They don’t know yet that a new Beast has been born, and he’s being submerged by the awful, awesome onus of the power he’s inherited. 

Eventually, Wirt is too exhausted to fight. He hangs limp in the Unknown’s prison and drifts. The winter winds settle down. Animals creep from their hiding places, their trepidation fading. The sounds of a boy’s helpless bodiless sobbing stop haunting the darkest parts of the woods. The forest is still…

The moon has finished an entire phase when Wirt arches his spine upward—_his body, he has his body back_—and inhales raggedly from where he lays in a carpet of frost-silvered pine needles… miles away from where he was last. He groans; the fir he’s sprawled under quakes lightly in sympathy. 

“What…” Wirt sits up slowly, woozy. Static scatters his vision. He bows forward to rest his face in his hands… flinches upright when he dips too low and his stomach swoops, failing to correct for an unexpected weight on his head. Trembling fingers edge up his temples until they hit something growing just above his ears. His hands close around each ligneous base. “N-no. No. Uh-uh, no, _no,_ no no no no no—”

He scrambles and scrapes over the fragrant pine needles until he’s standing and _sprinting,_ fleet despite his lightheadedness, his mindless panic, and the Unknown must know what he’s looking for because the trees whisper for him to plunge down _that_ path, go up _here,_ until Wirt breaks from the woods to the bank of a river. Most of the water flows under a glassy sheet of ice; he jogs along the current’s path until he finds a spot where the river runs too quickly to freeze. 

His reflection ripples up at him: fathomless blue eyes scorching the snow and antlers twisting horizontally from his crown. Just saplings, for now—black as ink, knobbed and spiked. Wirt flails from the sight and howls.


	2. 🙞Alone🙜

Wirt had thought he was lonely in high school. He’d give anything to go back now.

He sleepwalks occasionally, even though it isn’t true “sleepwalking.” He simply has no other word for how his consciousness drifts away while he wanders down overgrown paths, mind sinking into the mud and shadow until thoughts and dreams flicker through his numbed awareness. 

Images come to him in snapshots. Greg’s sallow face as he’s trapped in the Edelwood, eaten alive. Greg beaming up at him with candy in his stubby fists. _“You promised we’d hunt for frogs, remember?”_ A stab of disgust and humiliation, recalling Greg tailing after his friends and broadcasting Wirt’s feelings for Sara to anyone who’d listen. Wracking guilt as Greg blinks up at him from the branches consuming him, telling Wirt that it’s all his fault they’re here, his fault they got lost, and Wirt breaking down and insisting _no, it wasn’t you. I’ve never been a good brother to you. I’m sorry._

Sara’s kind face. The dread of talking to her. That night in the graveyard, tripping over his own tongue. The roar of a train and the leap of adrenalin that had Wirt lifting Greg up away from the tracks.

On and on. Wirt shakes himself awake, wilting a little when he notices that the sun has dipped lower in the sky or that he’s wound up in a new place in the woods he’s never been before, wind rattling the aspens like they’re greeting a king. His stomach contracts around its emptiness. His glowing eyes are raw from tears already shed. He hasn’t eaten in weeks. He feels like he should be dead, but the Unknown won’t let him die. 

Maybe he’s descending back into the Unknown when his awareness wanders, as he did after Beatrice abandoned him. Seeping down under the fallen leaves and animal prints like rain. 

One blustering afternoon, Wirt “wakes up” just outside of a village. The nearness of civilization shocks him. He freezes like the deer; appropriate, given his budding antlers. No trees stretch from the within the village’s gates, and for some reason that feels like a blind spot to Wirt.

He catches himself meandering farther down the path, toward a fallow white-covered garden facing the woods. “Hello?” His voice hooks in his throat. Wirt’s battered shoes crunch in the snow, cautious, not trusting the peaceful quiet of this place he’s stumbled upon. But if there’s any chance that someone here can help him, or _talk_ to him, remind him that he still exists, then Wirt is taking it. After clearing his throat he tries again. 

The timbre of his voice is a smooth clarity that belongs in a choir. “Is anyone there?” 

Noise from inside the nearest cottage. Wirt pauses right there in the open, the shine of his eyes splashing the tiny home’s back door.

A little girl and boy step out. She’s Greg’s age, probably; he’s obviously younger. The siblings must have been about to run outside and play, because they’re grinning ear to ear up until the instant they see Wirt awkwardly standing at the edge of their back garden. They freeze like Wirt froze. He can taste the heat of their fear like spilled blood. It stokes something primal in him; unthinkingly, he rivets the whole of his focus upon the children, breath going shallow. “Hey there,” The Beast croons to them. “My name’s…” That richness in his voice stutters for a moment. He has to close his eyes against the distracting pull of their vitality, their vulnerability, right there for the taking. “...Wirt. My name’s Wirt. You are…?”

The little boy whimpers and shifts himself behind the girl, who looks like she’s about to wail. They’d sleep nicely in the soil. They were so young, so innocent, the years ahead of their lives would burn for so long—

Wirt snarls and clamps his palms over his ears as if that can snuff out the slavering desire of the forest. The children dart back into their cottage and slam the door behind them; their high, frightened voices are easily caught above the unnatural thundering of Wirt’s pulse. _There’s a monster outside! A monster is trying to get us!_

He runs just like he ran from the graveyard—like a damn coward—tucking his torn cloak close to his shivering body. In the woods he’s safe; branches welcome him in, hiding him in their muted tapestry of black and white and grey. 

No sleepwalking this time. Wirt is wired awake, teeth chattering through the evening and all through his sleepless night, scared out of his mind. He had wanted to _consume_ those kids, unhinge his jaw and swallow their souls like a snake. He had smelled the mouthwatering promise of oil dripping from their discarded bones. They would have succumbed to despair _easily,_ he thinks, he’d just have to lead them into the darkness and wait like a vulture until they inevitably gave in to the will of the earth…

Wirt dry heaves into the delicate twigs of a bush, insides wringing so hard he feels as if he’ll split in half. Is this how the original Beast felt? So incredibly, _achingly_ hollow?

The _new_ Beast is starving and so, so alone. When he finally peers up from where he _didn’t_ vomit, his gaze falls upon the eerie black bark of an Edelwood. _Fuel for the fire. Oil for the lantern._ The truth that the first Beast had unwittingly revealed. A predatory urgency seizes him. Perhaps the reason that hunger torments Wirt is because the Woodsman is not doing his job.

“Find him.” A command murmured to the moonlit woods. A vision overlays his awareness, brought obediently by a copse of dormant maples several miles north. Wirt bares his teeth and starts walking.


	3. 🙞Stranded🙜

Wirt tracks the Woodsman like a bloodhound, stalking tirelessly onward. Now that he knows exactly where the old man is, no uncertainty slows him, and he rips through the bracken like a wolf in pursuit of prey. The woods go dead silent where he treads—not a single living thing daring to draw The Beast’s attention. 

It’s a beautiful day when Wirt runs down the Woodsman at last. Limpid blue sky. Sunlight glittering off the ice sheathing every twig. He feels perversely delighted at catching the elder off-guard… and then he feels ashamed of himself. Why had he been so intent on hunting this man? _I should go… I-I shouldn’t bother him, what is with me…_

A bundle of sticks—not Edelwood, Wirt can smell it from where he lurks—is strapped to the Woodsman’s broad back. And hanging in the Woodsman’s left hand… 

“There you are, boy,” the Woodsman mutters. He stops walking and turns to face Wirt where the stunned kid is folded up in the dark lattice of a bush. A mask of pity deepens the lines around his eyes and mouth. “I was wondering when you’d come looking for this.” 

The lantern dangles from his gnarled hand; Wirt’s soul blazes brightly from its round glass window. Savage _need_ pounces on the corrupted boy and he lunges forward—

An axe’s sharp edge at his throat stops him. Wirt glares at the Woodsman, so furious he sputters and hisses like a tea kettle until he can form actual words. 

“I need that—it’s _mine._” He swipes. The blade pushes against his adam’s apple and Wirt gags, disbelief wiping away the animal greed written in his features. It’s just enough of a shock to somewhat bring him back. “Wh...why do _you_ need it? Your daughter…”

“She was never in the lantern. The Beast tricked me. I’m a foolish old man.” It sounds as if he’s been saying this to himself every day since Wirt took The Beast’s place. “You figured out what I was too blind to see. I didn’t want to know about the Edlewood—” The Woodsman closes his eyes and lowers the axe to hover at Wirt’s chest-level. “We both learned a terrible lesson that night, didn’t we?”

That old, tired stare runs across the short span of Wirt’s antlers and the boy cringes. The Woodsman has not put the axe down. 

“It’s… lonely,” blurts Wirt. Admitting it uncorks everything else he’s been suffering since the core of his being was torn out of his ribs. Impossibly—because there’s no way he should still have tears left—his eyes water. He can’t bring himself to look directly at the Woodsman. “I m-miss my brother and I just… I don’t know what I’m doing? I w-want to wake up, I sh-shouldn’t b-be here…”

The Beast clears his throat. He hugs his cloak, the navy wool torn in places and threadbare in others, tighter around his shoulders. A crazy thought—a _desperate_ thought—leaps into his mind. “M-maybe… maybe I could come with you? Then we both don’t have to be al-lone. I could help you… chop wood, or something…” The reproach on the Woodsman’s expression makes Wirt’s voice drift away. A familiar anxious buzz in his abdomen warns him that he must have said something wrong. 

“I miss the old Beast,” sighs the Woodsman. “It would be better if you were a monster I could hate.”

The axe whistles through the air. Wirt cuts to the right, flinching like a kicked mutt, but the Woodsman wasn’t aiming to kill him. With a sickening _whack_ the blade chops at Wirt’s antler and cracks the onyx bough in half.

Blinding pain drops Wirt to the snow. Shrieks wrench from his open mouth and the wounded-creature sounds rake clouds through the pristine sky, blotting out the sun and plunging the temperature colder still. Liquid that is too dark to be blood seeps from the antler’s jagged break and drips onto the snow—black punctuation marks on the whiteness. Wirt’s skull must have cracked from the axe’s blow because he can’t see he can’t think it hurts it hurts it hurts—

“Let that be a warning to you, boy. Don’t follow me. Don’t try to take the lantern back. I’ll keep it lit for you.” _Because I have no choice_ is what the old man doesn’t say. Because both of them know what could happen if Wirt’s soul extinguishes. If the lantern doesn’t claim the Woodsman, then it will devour the Unknown—an entire world wiped out like the smoking wick of a candle. “I’m sorry. This is how things are.”

The elder does not watch Wirt wailing in anguish for long. He backs mournfully away into the gathering fog, off to continue the unspeakable work required for purgatory to survive. 

Eventually, while Wirt hiccups and shivers bitterly where he fell, the break in his antler starts to mend. Vine-like tendrils reach across the split and pull the fractured ends together before wrapping bandage-like around the wound—strengthening it. Pain throbs and ebs until it is no more than an ache. Panting unevenly, Wirt climbs back into standing position and huffs in the direction where he feels his disembodied spirit pulling him. He is _starving._ And he has the vicious suspicion that the Woodsman will only feed the lantern scraps of tinder, just enough to stoke the flame, the merest splinters of Edelwood necessary to keep Wirt alive and unbearably famished. _This is how things are._ A decision that the _Woodsman_ has made, but not Wirt.

Wirt’s blue eye flare white-hot with rage.

**Author's Note:**

> Bonus track: "Wish You Were Here" by Lia Ices


End file.
